COMMUNITY ENERGY RESOURCE GUIDE

The RMI Community Energy Resource Guide offers a structured process for local governments to transition to clean energy. It outlines a 6-to-12-month planning cycle involving stakeholder collaboration, data baselining, and the selection of sector-specific tactics. The guide details strategies across four primary domains: buildings, electricity supply, transportation, and industry, while emphasizing the role of 'broad enablers' like Green Banks and updated utility regulatory models to scale implementation.

• A successful community energy planning process is characterized by transparency and collaboration, often taking between six and twelve months from inception to adoption.
• Effective leadership is the most critical asset for a community energy plan; the leadership team should be representative of various constituencies, including the business community and neighborhood groups, and supported by dedicated staff or a 'backbone' organization.
• Communities should begin their energy analysis with high-level estimates and benchmarking against peer cities to determine the 'size of the prize' before investing in deeper, more costly technical analyses.
• Broad enablers, such as Green Banks, Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, and on-bill repayment mechanisms, are essential for scaling renewable energy and efficiency projects by leveraging private capital.
• In the building sector, 'deep retrofits' provide value beyond simple energy savings, including improved employee productivity and increased property value, and are most cost-effective when timed with major equipment replacements.
• Communities can increase renewable electricity supply through various levers, including Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), which allows local governments to procure energy from providers other than the incumbent utility.
• Transportation energy use can be reduced by focusing on two primary levers: reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in single-occupancy vehicles and increasing fuel efficiency through the adoption of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs).
• Industrial energy efficiency can be significantly improved through 'integrative design,' where whole-system thinking allows the by-products of one enterprise to serve as resources for another, as seen in the Kalundborg, Denmark ecosystem.
• Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems are highly efficient, achieving fuel-use efficiencies of 60% to 80%, compared to 45% to 55% for separate heat and power systems.

APA

Bunker, K., Doig, S., Fowler, E., Mandel, J., & Michelet, C. O. (2015). COMMUNITY ENERGY RESOURCE GUIDE. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/04/Community_Energy_Resource_Guide_Report_2015.pdf

Chicago

Bunker, Kaitlyn, Stephen Doig, Erik Fowler, James Mandel, and Christa Owens Michelet. COMMUNITY ENERGY RESOURCE GUIDE. RMI, 2015. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/04/Community_Energy_Resource_Guide_Report_2015.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bunker |first1=Kaitlyn |last2=Doig |first2=Stephen |last3=Fowler |first3=Erik |last4=Mandel |first4=James |last5=Michelet |first5=Christa Owens |title=COMMUNITY ENERGY RESOURCE GUIDE |publisher=RMI |date=December 2015 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/04/Community_Energy_Resource_Guide_Report_2015.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bunker2015community, author = {Bunker, Kaitlyn and Doig, Stephen and Fowler, Erik and Mandel, James and Michelet, Christa Owens}, title = {{COMMUNITY ENERGY RESOURCE GUIDE}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2015}, month = dec, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/04/Community_Energy_Resource_Guide_Report_2015.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }